Immersion Is Key

So in a previous post, I mentioned monolingual immersion, and why it's important, but what about dictionaries? This doesn't just mean physical paper books, but anything you use like a dictionary, such as Google. Should you try to use a monolingual dictionary as well? Well no, you don't need to, at least not until you feel ready, which for many people, may never come. Even if you reach fluency in your target language, many still chose to use a bilingual dictionary because it's easier. Most people will always be most comfortable in their native language, and there is nothing wrong with this, there is no need to force yourself to use a monolingual dictionary. You CAN do so, if you feel ready, and want to give it a try, but this will require a very high level of proficiency in the language to be effective. Don't believe anyone that tells you it is required, a dictionary is just a tool, and it will be most effective if you use it how you feel most comfortable doing so.

As I've mentioned before, learning any language is a very time consuming process, and there are no shortcuts. If you are determined to learn a new language, you need to reach a point where you can begin consuming content that interests you in the target language. Books, movies and TV, radio and podcasts, whatever you're interested in will do. That is your first goal. At this point, you can begin your "Effortless Language Learning". You'll still be engaging with the language, but you'll be doing things that you like, it won't feel like work anymore. You'll learn new words and phrases incidentally, and the pace of your learning can increase. The more words you know, the more content you understand, the easier it is to learn new words, and the rich get richer.

Input is the king of language learning, you need to consume a massive amount of the language to acquire the language. Since this is such a daunting task, you need to be efficient, and find the right input for you. If the input isn't comprehensible, it's effectiveness is significantly reduced. So where do you start, how do you get a foothold in a language you know nothing about? This is actually pretty simple, any number of "self teach" books can do the job, or most any language learning program. Personally, I prefer online programs, they are easily accessible anywhere, and many teach the language with minimal English explanation getting in the way. So I'll list my favorites that cover a variety of languages, just in case people aren't aware of them. https://www.duolingo.com/  - I chose Duolingo because I liked it's teaching style, the content it provided was informative and varied, and it didn't waste my time with English explanations. https://www....

One of the biggest mistakes I see people make early on is watching videos with subtitles. They think that if they can't understand anything, they can read the subtitles to help understand what is happening. In theory this sounds smart, but there's a problem. We are extremely bad at splitting our attention, especially if we are trying to speed read subtitles, which will take up most of our attention, and leave little to no brainpower left to listen and absorb the dialog. Even if you can't understand anything, there is value in listening to the language you want to learn, spoken by native speakers. Your brain is a powerful pattern recognition machine, and over time, your brain will start picking out repeated sounds, words, and phrases, and from there you can use a dictionary, or Google, but find the meaning of these bits and pieces. It is not fast, languages that are less like your native language may take longer than others, but it will come. Listening to the language should...

It may not be obvious, but immersion is actually how we learn our first languages. When we are toddlers, learning to make our first sentences, we aren’t studying flash cards, we are spending hundreds of hours listening to, and absorbing the language from our families. Even as adults we can continue to use this process to learn, except with one major benefit. We’re adults, and we’re smart. We can use the internet, and a dictionary, or Google. We have access to tools to aid us in this process.